A POWER CUT has led to an extra day's holiday for pupils at a county school.

Youngsters across East Lothian returned to lessons this morning (Wednesday) following the October break - but not at St Martin's RC Primary School, Tranent.

For the school was unable to open due to the electrical fault, part of a wider loss of power affecting some areas of East Lothian this morning.

At about 8.20am, the school tweeted that there was a problem.

They said: “Due to an electrical fault, the school will be closed today in line with health and safety procedures. We will keep you informed with regards the school opening tomorrow. Apologies for the inconvenience.”

Earlier this afternoon, the school confirmed on Twitter that the fault had been fixed and the school was set to open as normal tomorrow (Thursday).

They said: "We are pleased to report that ScottishPower have been able to resolve the electrical issue which had occurred at an external substation and the school electricity and heating is now working.

"Thank you to all pupils, staff and families for their support and understanding in this unexpected situation. As always the health and safety of those in our care is our paramount concern and we look forward to welcoming everybody back to school tomorrow."

The problem was part of a wider fault across the county affecting some residents in Longniddry, North Berwick, Haddington and Ballencrieff.

ScottishPower engineers worked onsite at Peppercraig substation to find the cause of the fault and get their customers' power back on.

The cause of the outage was due to a problem with the overhead network.

Despite power being affected in a number of towns and villages, Scottish Power said that only about 100 customers were affected.

The wide area and high number of postcodes affected is because the long stretch of line covers all of these areas.

A ScottishPower spokesperson said: "We had three customers in Longniddry and Ballencrieff who had their power out until 3.30pm.

"The majority of our customers had their power back on by lunchtime, some had their power back on in 15 minutes."

ScottishPower apologised for the inconvenience caused.